


The Chief Star of Heaven

by ZeeCatfish



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, bloodswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 15:07:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4526727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZeeCatfish/pseuds/ZeeCatfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meenah Peixes knew the world would be hers long before the world even knew she was in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whittler_of_words](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whittler_of_words/gifts).



She’s been in hiding from the moment Horuss stole her from the caverns, bright red grub skin swaddled in heavy drapery to avoid wandering eyes. In the shadowy gutters of the empire she pupates and grows, far from the eyes and ears of the Emperor.

Because they hide in seedy taverns and musty caves, because they travel at the latest evening light and the earliest rays of the dawning sun it isn’t until past her fifth wiggling day that Meenah first sees the starry night sky at the darkest hour of the night, millions of glittering lights winking down at her.

Horuss mumbles something about gas and fire, shoulders hunched and eyes flitting around the clearing for possible threats because that’s just how he is; careful and quiet and hunched over to draw as little attention as possible, passing as just another lowblood beaten down by life and it’s many horrors.

His words are wise and scholarly, because he cares about details and specifics and understanding the machinations of the world around him, but Meenah isn’t listening, because Meenah looks up at the stars and sees a thousand golden treasures unclaimed and a world bowing down at her feet.

Her maniac grin shines sharper than ever under the moonlight as she grabs Horuss’ hand and guides him beside her, into the light. She’s outgrown the shadows and he knows it, so he falls into step behind her without a word as she embarks to take on the world.

They find Kurloz on the brink of death, skin clammy and cold and unpleasantly pale. Meenah wraps him in bandages and declares he come with them, and Horuss redoes them when she falls asleep and won’t take offense to his interference.

When Kurloz follows them, he does it because he thinks them funny. When he stays he does it because the taste of blood as Meenah spears an unsuspecting cerulean through the eye awakens something deep inside him.

He is silent and dependable, words offered so rarely that his own companions startle when he speaks and guides them towards the sleazy underbelly of the city, where they find liars and greed.

Cronus is a swindler and a bottomfeeder, and Horuss hates him the moment they set eye on him, but there is something refreshingly honest about his chintzy disposition that has Meenah toss him against the wall and bite his lips to bleeding shreds. He follows them in a starry-eyed daze, wrapped around her fingers and sometimes, if she allows it, the rest of her body.

Between the psychic power that rolls off Kurloz’ skin in waves and leaves their enemies sobbing and sad and defenseless against the sharp end of Meenah’s spear, Horuss biting back bile and the urge to boil his skin clean of blood and nightmares as necks snap between his oversized hands like twigs and Cronus driving bullets and knives and anything sharp his thieving fingers find in the backs of anyone who turns theirs towards him their reputation grows.

Meenah no longer fits the shadows, so when she truly strikes she does so illuminated by moonlight, cutting the king’s purple regent down in the middle of a public square for all the castes to see. Alternia has grown stagnant under the guidance of the Emperor, a pale imitation of what the slime whispers into their ageless sovereign’s dreams at night, visions of a world long gone.

Deep wounds have festered under his rule, and when Meenah pierces skin she draws it all to the surface.

And it is covered in blood and guts and gore that she shines, truly shines for the first time, strutting like an empress and covered in precious stones offered by those who fear her and those who support her and those who do all of that and more at the same time, which make up a fair amount.

Battles are won with numbers Horuss cautioned her once, but numbers were never Meenah’s enemy; here at the center of a revolt exquisitely painted in blood people flock to her like piranhas tasting death in the water. The knowledge she was always meant to rule rests deep inside of her being, steeped into the marrow of her bones where only death can wrest it from her.

Meenah flourishes under the attentions of her army, with Horuss and Kurloz beside her and Cronus below her, and as her shine grows brighter her hubris leaves all of them blind.

When the king withdraws from his dreaming long enough to retaliate it devastates her army; a single note from a demon in the ocean’s shadowy depths shreds millions in seconds without bias. Loyalties don’t matter as maroon, brown and a great deal of yellow spills needlessly across the planet.

The army that marches towards the final clash is bereaved and furious, a gaping hole by Meenah’s side where her friend and confidant can’t stand because his mind is torn to shreds, his sanity worn too thin to send him to war.

Horuss wonders, in the private confines of his thinkpan, whether it is mercy or Meenah’s selfishness that keeps Kurloz alive.

Cronus grows bolder without Kurloz to scare him into his place, all boasts and sharp instruments stuck into ribs until they reach the oceanside where the beast’s violet keeper awaits them.

She’s armed to the teeth and every bit as fiercely loyal to her king as the whispers say. When she leaps forward it’s with intention to kill, no movement wasted, and if Horuss hadn’t stepped in when he did it might have cost them much more than Cronus’ left eye.

As is she crumples on the beach, last words illegible in her dying gurgle, and Horuss looks vaguely ill. He’s never taken to killing like the others have, and it’s hard to think of deaths as noble while Cronus shrieks in the background.

It’s court’s worst-kept secret that the violet huntress warmed the king’s coon in more than one quadrant, sticking together real close and naked like sardines in a tin, and if they weren’t at war before, then the growing bloodstain on the sand assures them they sure are now.

The real battle is a battle of numbers and confusion; what marched passing for an army becomes an angry mob when they reach the peninsula on which the emperor’s castle rests, a massive structure built to give the illusion of it slowly sinking into the sea.

The loyalists rally before and around it, many of them seadwellers kept in relative safety by staying in the ocean, but it’s a downhill battle for them. The peninsula is defensible because the strip of pearly white sand connecting castle to mainland is so thin only five men could walk it side-by-side, but the peninsula itself is so small it limits the amount of land-dwelling troops available, and Meenah never claimed to be above throwing numbers at walls until they break.

Furious whispers carry through the mass of disloyal bastards and angry peasants she’s gathere creating a moving, breathing behemoth of old fury high on the fumes of blood and beyond listening to orders. Maybe she should care, but she’s painted the mob a target before she let it loose, and she’s more than happy to sit back and watch the castle’s defense crumble.

The peasantry, she tells Cronus with an unpleasant grin on her face, loves a good show. Dramatic irony, public defamation, an execution for all the world to see; the bigger the spectacle the happier they will be.

The king is tossed in the sand before her, the blueblood who opened the castle gates but a few paces behind him. Meenah’s voice booms over the crowd and, like a spell falls over the battlefield, everything goes deathly silent like the night itself is hanging on her every word.

When she cut’s the king’s throat it is almost elegant in it’s execution; a swift splatter of royal fuchsia on the sand to end a bitter and angry war.

“The king is dead,” she tells them, shining in the night like a beacon. Horuss silences the blueblood before she can scream her protest and ruin the moment, muffles her voice in his armpit with little more than a wince as she sinks her teeth into his skin.

Cronus ambles forward and fishes the crown from the dead king’s head, holding it up in Meenah’s general direction with a lecherous grin as he says, with as much grace as he can muster, “Long live the queen!”

She laughs, a savage sound that cuts through the night. “And may every world under the stars know it!”

Because she is an empress by heart if not by blood, and Alternia's throne could never be big enough to keep her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fic title is a reference to Suikoden because one of Meenah's walkaround musical themes is a Suikoden reference (108 stars of density), but I want you to know the file name of the work in progress was 'Happy Hour With the Regicide Squad'. The next chapter is not a continuation of this one; it's just an extra set in the same universe.


	2. Prelude to a Bloody Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has very little to do with the main fill and is mostly intended as a bonus that just kind of happened. Obviously it's chronologically set before the main chapter.

Beady red eyes stare up at you without blinking. You’re used to stares and whispers, but there’s something about this grub’s stare that unnerves you, a fearlessness that you’re not sure what to make of.

You don’t blame anybody for it. You’re too big for the caverns no matter how low you hunch your shoulders. You break valuable tools of the trade between thick, powerful fingers when you’re nervous and twitchy. It’s only natural for them to fear you, fear what you could do.

The grub is a mutant, brighter than any other you’ve seen. You’re on watch because you’re good at it according to the overseer, but you’ve listened to enough whispers to know it’s because you’re an anomaly.

Some of the girls question why you’re allowed to work in the caverns at all. Sometimes they dress it up as a courtesy; why your strength could have so much better uses, that you’d be more comfortable in hallways meant for people your size.

Sometimes they’re honest enough to admit it’s because you’re a man, and men don’t belong at the mother grub’s side.

Most of the grubs give you a wide berth, eyeing you carefully. You’re big, so you’re a threat. That seems a pretty common theme in your life these days. You never thought you’d miss being a teenager, awkward, unhappy and unattractive but twiggy and capable of using doorways without extra acrobatics.

But this one grub, whose neck you should have twisted the moment you saw her, happily ambles towards you.

You’re not sure what you’re thinking when you stick out your hand, big enough to cover her little red body in it’s entirety and squish the grub-juices out of her (and isn’t that just the nastiest thing, better not think about it anymore).She hops on your palm with a happy squeak and explores the skin webbing between your fingers with pointy little teeth and a tiny tongue mutant-hot to the touch, not even flinching as you slowly lift her up.

She’s so small, you think helplessly as you watch her amuse herself. Overcome with the sudden urge to touch her, maybe smooth out some of the ridiculous messy mop of hair on her little head, you lift a single finger and run it over her back.

She doesn’t break.

You pride yourself on loyalty and commitment to duty. You can’t recall a single rule you’ve broken in all the sweeps you’ve lived, even as you grit and broke your teeth under the pressure of whispers and derisive stares you did nothing to deserve.

Killing the mutant before it reaches the trials is a sacred duty that keeps your species’ genetic pool clean from undesirables. It’s important, it’s disgusting and no soap in the world can clean the blood from your fingers, which you’d know because you’ve rubbed and rubbed but it’s imprinted on your bones where soap and sponge can’t reach.

When you were little, a jade body in a sea of colours, someone in these very caverns decided you were worthy of living. You, who bursts out of the seams of your designated lot in life in every direction, were given a chance. What right do you have to look at this small creature, tough enough to giggle at your thick, sausage-fingered caress, deserves to die?

Before you can change your mind you slip the small grub into the cowl of your tunic, cloth draped loosely over your torso because jade sizes are just too small for proper tailoring, and break your very first rule.

**Author's Note:**

> The fic title is a reference to Suikoden because one of Meenah's walkaround musical themes is a Suikoden reference (108 stars of density), but I want you to know the file name of the work in progress was 'Happy Hour With the Regicide Squad'.


End file.
